Douglas Petrie

Fantastic Four’s long trip

Comedy thriller? Action flick? The Marvel Comics story has taken more forms than its superheroes.

In issue No. 1 of the Fantastic Four comic book, four astronauts are bombarded by mysterious cosmic rays. In a few short pages, they become superheroes, each a specialist of sorts: a human fireball, a super-elastic genius, an invisible woman and an indestructible rock creature prone to exclaiming, "It’s clobberin’ time!"

While that transformation was relatively painless, turning Fantastic Four into a movie has proven to be a herculean undertaking.

On its way to the big screen, Marvel Comics’ much-loved franchise lingered in developmental purgatory and took on more incarnations than David Bowie in the 1970s. Over the course of 11 years, many of Hollywood’s most comic-literate storytellers have been hired and fired, to say nothing of the studio headbanging and tens of millions of dollars in preproduction funds that have been poured into the project, which finally lands in theaters this Friday.

With the movie envisioned variously as a "Charlie’s Angels"-style comedy thriller, a meta-narrative examination of celebrity à la the Beatles’ "A Hard Day’s Night" and a no-nonsense action flick, no fewer than 12 screenwriters toiled on the "Fantastic Four" script and at least five directors came and went. Indie maverick Roger Corman even produced a low-budget version in 1994, which was summarily shelved by Marvel and 20th Century Fox, the film’s distributor.

Even after Marvel and Fox settled on an approach and a filmmaker, the project was not without its bumps. In late 2003, when Fox pinned down a June 29, 2005 release date - prime summer real estate reserved for surefire hits like "War of the Worlds" - it was hustled into production. Tim Story, the director of "Barbershop" (and the critical and commercial disappointment "Taxi"), was hired by Marvel and Fox to direct "Fantastic Four" amid criticism by hard-core fans on the Internet that he was under-qualified to handle a big-budget, effects-driven popcorn movie.

The comic book thriller marks a key test for the wayward performance of Marvel characters, whose popularity has swung widely from smashes like "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" to several recent also-rans, such as "Elektra" and "Blade: Trinity."

Avi Arad, Marvel’s chief executive, is looking to "Fantastic Four" to steady the course.

"The pressure on us is, you expect this kind of movie to deliver — to cut the 100 [million dollars]," he said, citing a domestic gross that few Marvel films have come close to and none has surpassed since last year’s "Spider-Man 2."

And in a dismal box-office year in which ticket sales have slumped into their 19th consecutive week (compared to last year by this time), some in the industry wonder whether "Fantastic Four" can possibly maintain the fairly positive momentum established by last week’s Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise drama, "War of the Worlds."

Atypical superheroes

When F4 was first conceived in 1961, movie heroes tended to be strong silent types like John Wayne and Steve McQueen. Marvel’s Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created the Four, breaking many of the time-honored superhero rules. Unlike Superman and Batman, for instance, they didn’t always get along or protect their secret identities.

The comic has gone on to become Marvel’s longest-running series, with action coalescing around the heroes as a dysfunctional family unit barely at ease with one another and their unique powers.

In the early 1990s, Marvel was in bad financial shape and sold the Fantastic Four’s movie rights to German producer Bernd Eichinger ("Resident Evil: Apocalypse"), who was putting together a deal for a $30-million live-action version. But in 1993, with his option nearly expired, Eichinger approached Corman, a veteran low-budget moviemaker ("Death Race 2000," "Carnosaur") who owned his own production and distribution company, offering Corman $1 million to shoot a quickie version based on a script by Craig J. Nevius and Kevin Rock. Time - not execution - was of the essence.

"He explained his option was due to expire unless we started principal photography on Dec. 31 of that year," Corman said. The crew promptly canceled their holiday vacations, and production commenced Dec. 28

Directed by Oley Sassone ("Bloodfist III"), with a C-list cast including Alex Hyde-White and Rebecca Staab, Corman’s 1994 "Fantastic Four" relies on lo-fi production values such as stock space travel footage and bits of unintentionally hilarious dialogue. In one scene, the Four’s leader, Reed Richards, invites Sue and Johnny Storm (the future Invisible Girl and Human Torch) to travel into space with him - even though they are not astronauts. Mother Storm’s advice: "You just be sure to have them back at a reasonable hour."

Upon completion in early 1994, Eichinger exercised an option to buy Corman’s interest in the film. Eichinger then sold the "Fantastic Four" property to Fox. The Corman/Sassone film was never distributed. Corman says copies for sale in the Internet are unauthorized

"It’s the strangest deal I ever made in my life", Corman said, "the most profitable film I ever made that did not get released."

Change of direction

In 1995, Marvel again tried to adapt the Fantastic Four. Writer-director Chris Columbus of "Home Alone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" fame was enlisted to adapt it. He brought his own team of writers, which included Sam Hamm ("Monkeybone"), Philip Morton ("Fire Down Below") and Michael France ("The Punisher," "Hulk"), and Columbus spent two years working on the project before leaving the director’s seat; he worried in the press that the movie’s budget might reach $280 million.

Columbus took a producing role while Peter Segal ("The Longest Yard") was considered as an alternative director. Ultimately, Raja Gosnell, the director of "Big Momma’s House," took over in 2000 and set about adapting the material with yet another team of writers. Gosnell, however, outraged Fantastic Four fans by announcing plans to adapt the comic as a "sitcom." And although the comic publisher had initially supported Gosnell’s comedic take - and Marvel’s Arad trumpeted the director’s plans in the press - he and Marvel soon parted ways.

"I called it a ’comedy-adventure,’ " Arad said. "The Fantastic Four are funny because the way they use their powers is quite whimsical." Gosnell did not respond to calls seeking comment.

After Gosnell, "A Knight’s Tale" director Brian Helgeland was among the considered replacements. But in 2001, Peyton Reed, director of the cheerleading hit "Bring It On," signed on. He began working on a script first with Tristan Patterson and later, Doug Petrie, writer for TV’s "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

But capturing the right mix of action, humor and pathos for the characters that creator Lee described as "heroes with hang-ups," continued to defy filmmakers. Internet chat rooms again lit up with the news the Reed-Petrie collaboration would recast "Fantastic Four" as a meta-narrative examination of the heroes’ fame as in the Beatles’ "A Hard Day’s Night." In a 2002 interview with MTV, Petrie elaborated on his conception of the Fantastic Four as "the biggest celebrities in New York City." Plot points included scenes of the superheroes ordering pizza and fighting about which of them had the best costume.

"There was an iteration that took the approach of a reality show," Arad said. "A camera inside the Baxter Building" - the Fantastic Four’s headquarters - "and the whole world could see what they’re doing all the time."

Reed left the project in 2003, citing "creative differences."

Superhero screenplay specialists Dan Harris and Mike Dougherty ("X-Men," "Superman Returns") and Zak Penn ("Elektra," "The Punisher") were hired to polish the script. But the final version began to take shape when France returned to the project. The writer concentrated on the screenplay’s tone and Mark Frost, the co-creator and writer of "Twin Peaks," was hired to shift the action back to the Four’s dysfunctional family origins.

"I had read the other drafts - Mark’s draft had more of the Fantastic Four as public heroes and celebrities. I toned that down," said Simon Kinberg, writer of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," who was hired after Frost to do final uncredited rewrites during production on "Fantastic Four." "I wanted to make it an origin story of superheroes who didn’t accept themselves as superheroes until the final sequence of the film."

He added that he didn’t find it unusual that the project had employed so many screenwriters. "These superhero movies that are long in development - you end up with a lot of writers. If you count all the writers on [Bryan Singer’s upcoming] ’Superman’ movie, you probably have 15 to 20 A-list writers."

Heartened by the screenplay’s progress, in late 2003, Fox gave the film a June 29, 2005 release date. And Marvel Studios had to scramble to find a director.

’Can I do this’

Music video ace Tim Story hadn’t finished his second feature, "Taxi," when Arad began courting him for the "Fantastic Four" job. Exhausted after an arduous shoot and with his wife six months pregnant, Story wasn’t sure he was up to handling a potentially gigantic franchise.

"I knew it had gotten up and gone down, that it had gone through Chris Columbus and Raja Gosnell and Peyton Reed," Story, 35, said. "When I was getting in on it, they had a date. It was a matter of, ’We’re finding a director and we’re going.’ It was never a question of if we’re going to make it. It was a question of: Can I do this?"

To hear Arad tell it, however, Marvel and Fox were sure they had their man - even if Story’s résumé didn’t seem like a perfect fit for an effects-driven action film and the increasingly restless fan community was opposed to him. The plan was to surround Story with many of the same experts Marvel employed for Singer’s "X-Men" films and let the director concentrate his attention on working with primary cast members Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Ioan Gruffudd, Julian McMahon and Chris Evans.

With so many generations of Fantastic Four material at his disposal, Story says he plundered the older scripts.

"I read quite a few of them," he said. "You try and take the greatest hits. We would just take the older scripts and try to find the best of and see if there was anything we wanted to keep."

Although Arad expressed confidence in the movie that Story gave them, after Marvel’s "The Punisher" was trounced on its opening weekend by "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," Marvel and Fox pushed "Fantastic Four’s" release date back to July 8 so as not to compete with "War of the Worlds’ " June 29 release.

"One thing we learned from ’The Punisher’ " Arad said. "Don’t force it. If you take this deadly combination of Spielberg and Cruise, you have to show respect. You take the following weekend. It’s too much riding on it."

In the final days leading up to "Fantastic Four’s" big-screen debut, Story admitted that he felt a personal responsibility to help reverse Marvel’s box-office slide.

"You look at ’Elektra’ and then you look at ’The Punisher’ and think, ’Well, if this one doesn’t do so well, then hmmm,’ " he said. "I must admit that the pressure came in the last couple of months where I go, ’Whoa!’"